


Strike Up the Band, Make the Fireflies Dance

by spacesbetweenseconds



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cisgirl!Zayn, F/M, Fluff, Genderswap, cisgirl!Harry, cisgirl!niall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacesbetweenseconds/pseuds/spacesbetweenseconds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Louis is an idiot about Harry, and everyone makes sure to tell him about it until he finally decides to make a move.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strike Up the Band, Make the Fireflies Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This fic is dangerously self-indulgent. I hope it's still good/cute even if you don't get all the Beantown references.
> 
> Written (and posted unbetaed) for Laura ladsfm for her birthday. Hope you like it, even though it's ages late.
> 
> None of this is true and, to my knowledge, none of the members of 1D are female identifying. Don't show this to them, I'm begging you.
> 
> Title is from "Kiss Me" by Six Pence None the Richer.

Niall had seemed sincere enough when she’d asked Louis to eat with her at Boloco in that odd block between their Thursday classes, though she was ostensibly more interested in playing with her boobs in their new pushup bra. Food was always the answer to the struggle of not quite wanting to sit in their dorms for two hours, but they were both miraculously tired enough of EmCafe bagels to spend real money. So, burritos.

Louis watched on, sipping a Nutella milkshake, his face contorted in amazement as Niall shoved what seemed like over half an original-size burrito in her mouth at once. “I’m not about to talk traditional gender roles and how I’m impressed a girl like you can eat so much, but like, if garbage disposal were a gender identity, you’d be it.” 

Niall looked up from her tortilla wrapped love affair, mouth full of teriyaki chicken. “It’s nothing special, just years of giving excellent head.” She took another bite, smirking into the sweet teriyaki sauce that somehow didn’t end up on her face. “And I’m not sure whether your girlfriend would be pleased that you know traditional gender roles aren’t something you eat with dinner, or sad that you’re perpetuating them.” 

Louis rolled his eyes and flipped his Louisville snapback backwards on his head, a tuft of hair sticking out of the hole in the back in the most endearing way. “Not my girlfriend.” He took another sip, trying to push the thought out of his mind. “You of all people should know that.”

“Whatever you say, bro. Harry’s not my girlfriend either, but I’m not thinking up about ten ways to kill Nick, since she’s probably giving him a lap dance in the recording studio right now.” Niall crushed the leftover foil from her burrito into a little ball, tossing it between her hands after she finally took a napkin to her face.

Louis bit down on his straw more harshly than he was willing to admit. To be fair, he’d only thought of six ways so far, which was not bad given his track record with Nick. He was absolutely not going to walk past Ansin later just to look in the window and wave to Harry while she infiltrated Nick’s insufferable hipster show yet again.

Nope. No chance.

Niall must have taken his silence as enough of an answer, because she said, “Exactly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a side of chips and guac.”

Louis rolled his eyes as he composted what was left of his milkshake. “Oh, for god’s sake, Niall.”

Niall just winked in Louis’ direction and got back in line.

\---

Louis would probably punish his feet if he could figure out how, because he left Boloco looking down, and when he looked up he was staring straight into the window of the WERS radio studio. He had no idea how he managed to jaywalk the corner of Boylston and Tremont without looking, especially when his treasonous legs were supposed to be leading him to the LB, which required no such crossing of streets.

He couldn’t figure out how he got there, but seeing her face made him feel much less mad about the whole detour. Harry looked so cute with Nick’s spare DJ headphones on, around her neck with one hand cupping the left side up to her ear. She was, as Niall had predicted, sitting on Nick’s lap. Nick was trying to push her away from all the buttons and dials and sliders, but he was trying harder to keep the grin off his face. Louis knew the feeling.

If he were a smoker, he could stand out here and watch her be cute for Nick’s whole two-hour shift. But that would be creepy. Right?

Right.

Harry looked up, her eyes even greener on the other side of the glass, and shook out her curls, pushing them away from her face. Their eyes met, hers and Louis’, and suddenly she was using her whole face to smile, teeth bared and eyes squinting like she was four years old and just got told she was having dinosaur shaped nuggets for dinner. Or, admittedly, like she was nineteen and just got told she was having dinosaur shaped nuggets.

She waved through the glass and poked Nick hard in the side, making him look up so she could point at Louis. Louis smiled, watching them interact, completely enamored. Nick’s brow furrowed as she started to talk and he shook his head, but she pouted and that was that. 

The song, which Louis thought might’ve been Of Monsters and Men but he couldn’t be sure when it came to Nick’s show, came to a close, and Harry reached for the microphone hanging above them. Louis could hear the background music coming from the speakers over his head, so he leaned closer, ready to hear them talk. 

“Hiya! Harry Styles here, Official Life Ruiner for Nick Grimshaw from 4-6pm every Tuesday and Thursday, and you’re listening to WERS 88.9FM. That was good, yeah?”

“Yeah, Harry, brilliant. You’ve got a face made for radio.”

“Heeeeyyyy. Rude.”

“Always. Now do your job and tell the people what’s up next, darling Harry, sunshine of my days, light of my life.” 

“Oh, Nick. Flattery will get you everywhere. Well, listeners, it’s Thursday at 5pm and you know what that means…Nick, play the drum roll sound, I’m trying for dramatic tension here!”

Nick pushed a button and rolled his eyes fondly.

She mimicked the drum sounds as they played through her headphones. “Throwback Thursday! For the next hour we’ll be bringing back some old songs and hopefully you’ll feel better than you did standing on the wall at your high school prom.” 

Louis couldn’t help but laugh at that, watching her eyes shine as she tried to talk through her smile. “We’re gonna start you off with some of the more powerful messages of our formative years: ‘if you wanna be my lover you’ve gotta get with my friends’. And ain’t that the truth? It’s one of your favorites and mine, a real salute to girl power, this is Wannabe by the Spice Girls.”

She looked up at Louis for approval, two thumbs up and her eyebrows raised in question, and he had to stop his heart from swelling.

\---

Louis knocked on Harry and Zayn’s door for what felt like half an hour, but was really more like five minutes. He never said he wasn’t impatient. “C’mon! Open up! This is important!”

There was some muted shuffling behind the door before it unlocked and Harry, wearing an inexplicable pair of glasses, looked at him crossly. “I’ll have you know Zayn and I are studying and—are those waffle fries? Did you go all the way to the Max to get waffle fries?”

“I’m not saying there’s honey mustard dip too, but there’s definitely honey mustard dip." 

“Zayyyyyn. He brought waffle fries!” Louis heard the long-suffering sigh of Zayn from the other side of the door, and the door opened just a fraction more, but enough for Louis to slip inside.

Zayn had her dark hair up in a bun on top of her head and her glasses were missing from her face, which explained Harry’s, as well as the look Zayn was sporting. 

“Studying, huh? Last I checked it was really hard to study without being able to see.”

“Tell that to her. I tried, but you’re the only one who can get through to her at this point. I’m trying to write a paper for Shippy, so I’d appreciate my vision back.”

“I’ll give her the glasses back if you give me the fries, Lou.” Harry said from her place at the foot of Zayn’s twin bed.

“Not on my bed. Please.”

“ _Fine._ Here, have your stupid eyes. Loser eyes.”

Zayn took her glasses back and gave her best eyebrow raise back at Harry as she ambled off Zayn’s bed and crawled to her own, making grabby hands at Louis, begging him to close the gap between her and her late night study food. Louis thrust his arm out, offering her the brown box and seeing her light up from inside.

“Come sit. I’m just working on flashcards for the theories on the Queer Dreams midterm. Take your shoes off, stay a while.”

“Harry.” Zayn said, looking up from her book of Native American poetry.

“I’ll get work done, Zayn, promise. He’ll only be here for a little while. Besides, this is important.” Harry brushed her off, mouth full of fries.

\---

Three hours later, Louis was still there, laughing about YouTube voiceovers of cats with misanthropic diaries, and Zayn was printing out her finished paper. “I don’t mean to be Sergeant Buzzkill, but when is this midterm?”

“I don’t know, it’s like, sometime next week. Maybe Monday? Have you seen this one? It’s hilarious, come here, you’ll like it.” Zayn, like everyone else in Harry’s life, had been ensnared by the fond, and it was easy to see that feeling overtake her face. Harry turned the computer screen at Zayn and pressed play, waiting for the reaction. Zayn smirked because yeah, it was funny, but Harry was falling backwards, practically barking with laughter. Louis wasn’t watching the video anymore, instead watching Harry genuinely fall apart from the laughter.

“That was absolutely side-splitting, Harry. Truly. Listen,” Zayn said, taking her hair down and running her fingers through it, looking at herself in the mirror inside her closet cubicle. “Josh doesn’t have classes tomorrow, and she’s left to go home for the weekend, yeah? So, I’m sleeping over at Niall’s tonight. You’ll be okay?”

“Yeah. Have fun getting laid!”

“Good on you. She apparently gives amazing head.” Zayn beaned him on the head with a folded up pair of thigh high socks, but was grinning nonetheless.

“I heard it right from the source! Promise!” Louis crossed his fingers over his heart in an overly dramatic way. “Though, she didn’t say if she’s as good with girls, so you’ll have to report back.” Harry snickered at Louis’ words, trying to catch her giggles in the hand pressed to her mouth. “Go! You’ve got things to do. Well, pretty Irish girls to sleep with. Whatever.”

“You two are both idiots, and I _will_ have fun getting laid, thank you.” The door clicked shut behind Zayn as she left, and Harry and Louis erupted into more giggles. They ended up lying on her bed looking up at the Ramones poster hanging up on her ceiling.

“You’re not getting any work done, are you?”

Harry was quiet for a moment. “It was really sweet of you to come see me today. During Grimmy’s show, I mean.” The way she looked at him then was too real for him to handle. He had never _really_ thought about it before his lunch with Niall, but they did act a bit like they were dating. Except for the sex, of course, but looking at the unglossed berry of her lips, Louis decided that he really wouldn’t mind.

He knew he had to make light of it now, or he was going to word vomit his feelings all over the place, so he went for the first thing that came to mind. “That’s what friends are for.”

“Right.” She sat up, and for the first time that night, Louis noticed what she was wearing, which he wasn’t entirely sure could be classified as clothes. She had on bright pink underwear and a tight black tank top, and he could see her nipples through the thin fabric. He never would’ve thought twice about it before, no stranger to Harry’s boobs (was anyone a stranger to Harry’s boobs?), but something about his recent revelation had him sweating at their positioning.

“Harry, are you…you’re not wearing a bra.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Just checking. Um. Girl power, and all that.” Louis swallowed and shook his head.

“Sure.” She squinted her eyes at him, and he knew it was a weak attempt at a cover up. She seemed intent on sparing him the embarrassment, though, because she shrugged and said, “I’m just lazy, but call it whatever you want.”

“Speaking of laziness, I can sleep here, yeah? The walk to the end of the hall is daunting and your bed is much comfier.” That was half true, at least that he was lazier than any self-respecting college student should be. His mattress had a pillow topper and was much, much more comfortable, but he had priorities, and sleeping next to Harry had definitely just moved way up the list.

Harry shut off the light, letting the darkness fall over them. She crawled back to where she’d been lying before, wrapping an arm around Louis’ chest. Through a yawn, she said, “Anytime, Loubear.”

\---

The next morning, far too early for a Friday, Louis and Liam were jogging in the common.

Well, Liam was jogging. 

Louis wasn’t out of shape, but he certainly wasn’t as in shape as Liam, and he’d just woken up. It seemed a reasonable excuse. He was currently standing by the tennis courts, hands on his knees and hunched over, trying not to dry-heave.

“You really should’ve hydrated before we left.”

“I was navigating waking up alone in Harry’s bed, Excuse me if I didn’t really have time for a Nalgene.”

“About that. You know how we have that 8am together on Fridays?” Liam waited for acknowledgement before he continued. Louis looked up, too much sweat dripping from his brow considering how little they’d run. “This morning she came in and asked me if I wouldn’t mind being conspicuously absent from our double tonight, and I’m not entirely sure what happened between you two, but am I allowed to say finally?”

“Sorry, she did what?”

Liam started jogging in place, his feet hitting the ground in a rhythmic way, helping a bit to even out Louis’ breaths. “And like, it’s no trouble, you know, for me to be gone tonight. I’ll just—”

“No, wait. She…wants you to not be in our room. She wants me to be alone. In our room.”

“Well, with her, most likely, unless she has a thing for imagining you masturbating. Which, knowing her…”

“Shut up, I’m trying to figure this out.” Louis stood up, closing his eyes and holding his index finger in Liam’s general direction.

“Can you figure it out while we’re moving? I want to get back in my cardio zone and my heart rate has gone down too much from standing here.” Louis narrowed his eyes at Liam, but as usual he looked too earnest to actually be mad at.

They started running again, Louis trying his best not to huff and puff his way through their lap around the frog pond. “Harry wants to be alone in my room with me, right? But so much so that she actually had to ask you to leave. Like, she made _plans_.”

“Louis, do you mean to tell me that you two didn’t have sex last night? Because that’s what I was getting from this.” They were almost at the edge by the State House and Louis groaned as he saw the stairs Liam was definitely going to make him run up.

“I would’ve done, if she’d made more of a move than just rubbing her barely clothed boobs on me, but you know she’s always talking about enthusiastic consent, and her nipples just weren’t enthusiastic enough.” Liam raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. “What? I thought she was just being Harry.”

“I’m not saying pounce on her, but she seemed pretty enthusiastic about me agreeing to leave. Hurry up and do these stairs with me. I have a class at noon and I still have to get to the gym for my strength training.” Liam said, now halfway up.

“I hate you. I hate you so much.”

\---

“Lou! Hey!”

Perhaps the sound of feet hitting the uneven concrete slabs of the sidewalk would be difficult to identify, but Louis knew that voice, could hear that voice from miles away and still know it. It was like Harry had grown roots in parts of him, wrapped around his slightly pudgy stomach like a tight hug. Or a boa constrictor. He wasn’t sure yet.

“Harry.” He could never keep his own voice neutral, affection bleeding through everything he said to her.

“So listen. There’s, um, this party off the B line tonight, around like, Packard’s? Maybe further out like Griggs. I’m not sure. I was wondering…” Harry was looking down, inspecting her unpainted nails a little too closely. It wouldn’t be cause for concern, had Liam not told Louis about his conversation with her in their morning class.

Louis, overeager as he was, breathed out a, “Yeah?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to hole up in your dorm and do something completely different. Like, I don’t know, eat C-Store cheese puffs and watch a movie?” She looked nervous in a way he’d never seen her look before, eyes wide and mouth busy chewing on one of her knuckles.

“Sounds great. I’m just about to head to that “Theater Ed using YA Lit” workshop that Christina’s teaching, but it should be done around nine, so you can come around then?” People passed by them, eager to get to the T after a long day of Friday classes (the worst kind of long day, as Louis knew too well from freshman year). But in that moment, before Louis steeled himself for what he would say next, everything stood still, waiting on the cliff’s edge. “And Liam will be gone, so we don’t have to be quiet.”

“Perfect.”

\---

Louis collapsed on his bed, mattress springs bouncing him up before letting him sink down into his navy comforter. He loved learning almost as much as he loved teaching, but theater education was intensive, and he could feel the exhaustion settle into his bones.

He'd known she was coming, but the knock that came on his door still threw him for a bit. He mumbled something unintelligible, but when the knock came again he cleared his throat and made the move to sit up. “Come in! It’s unlocked.” 

“Right, I’m nearly out of Board Bucks so I couldn’t buy a C-Store snack. So, I guess, like, don’t be mad?” Harry slipped in the door and shut it behind her, pressing the lock into place before moving to sit next to Louis. It didn’t escape Louis’ notice that she was fidgeting, and he couldn’t figure out how making moves on him of all people should make her so nervous that she was now talking at the speed of a normal human. “Because like, I know you bought me waffle fries from the Max when I was supposed to be studying and I never paid you back for those, and Zayn said not to worry about it because you were just being nice, right, but I still wanted to get you something and—” 

“Don’t worry about it, love. What movie do you want to watch?” Louis pressed his hands down into his mattress to give him the leverage to stand up and walk over to his bookshelf, but made no move to actually get up.

“Um. I don’t. Want to watch a movie, I mean.” Harry must have suddenly become extremely interested in the state of her cuticles, because she wouldn’t look at Louis.

“…Do you want to make out, then? Because we could definitely make out instead.”

Her head stayed down, but her eyes finally moved to meet his gaze, a small, hopeful smile on her lips. Louis returned the smile, waiting for her answer. “What are you waiting for?”

Louis inched closer and closer to Harry, closing the gap between their bodies until his hand lay on top of hers, his fingers toying with the idea of lacing between hers. A smirk rested easy on his lips as he spoke.

“Waiting for you to shout ‘Yes! Louis, please kiss me! Touch my boobs!’ from a mountaintop. I’m all about consent, you know; it’s a crucial component of any healthy sexual—”

“I love knowing _someone_ listens when I talk. Get on with it, then. You’re wasting time that could be spent kissing me.”

Louis reached for her cheek with his free hand, looking her in the eyes before pulling her in. Kissing Harry was like nothing Louis could have prepared himself for, and still it felt like they’d been doing it forever. He couldn’t remember any suitable reason why they hadn’t been, especially not when he felt the pressure of her teeth scraping ever so lightly on his bottom lip.

Harry licked into his mouth, hungrily running her tongue against Louis’. She softly gasped his name as his lips moved to her neck, pulling him closer. As she fell back onto the bed, Her flushed chest was heaving, and her curls lay haphazardly around her face, no real direction. She looked nothing like the girls in the movies, but she looked exactly like his Harry, and that was the best part.

\---

Louis woke up far too early to the angry vibrations of his cell phone on top of his wooden desk. He blindly fumbled around, trying not to wake Harry, who was still curled up in a ball and sleeping quite soundly. When he finally found (and managed to unlock) the phone, he read the incoming texts.

_From: Liam_

_dude congrats on pickin up harrys signals…………finally_

_From: Liam_

_also i got back this morn and tripped on yr tied off condom whn i opened the door, fuckin learn how to aim b4 next time_


End file.
